James Hansen: Climate and Wildlife

Hansen, J., 2008: Tipping point: Perspective of a climatologist. In
The State of the Wild 2008: A Global Portrait of Wildlife, Wildlands,
and Oceans. E. Fearn and K.H. Redford, Eds. Wildlife Conservation
Society/Island Press, in press.

I describe how two fundamental properties of our climate system, its
predominance of “positive feedbacks” and its ponderous inertia, have
together brought climate to a great tipping point, a planetary
emergency. I then discuss emerging impacts of climate change on the
wild. Finally I summarize fundamental data on fossil fuels, the main
driver of climate change, providing an outline of actions needed to
reverse the forces driving climate change.

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With a co-author, Hansen previously published an analysis of whether
peak oil might come soon enough to bring some relief to the pressures
pushing toward dangerous change of climate.
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